Timezone: »

 
Poster
Using Embeddings to Correct for Unobserved Confounding in Networks
Victor Veitch · Yixin Wang · David Blei

Tue Dec 10 05:30 PM -- 07:30 PM (PST) @ East Exhibition Hall B + C #143
in Probabilistic Methods -- Causal Inference »

We consider causal inference in the presence of unobserved confounding. We study the case where a proxy is available for the unobserved confounding in the form of a network connecting the units. For example, the link structure of a social network carries information about its members. We show how to effectively use the proxy to do causal inference. The main idea is to reduce the causal estimation problem to a semi-supervised prediction of both the treatments and outcomes. Networks admit high-quality embedding models that can be used for this semi-supervised prediction. We show that the method yields valid inferences under suitable (weak) conditions on the quality of the predictive model. We validate the method with experiments on a semi-synthetic social network dataset.

Keywords: Embedding Approaches · Causal Inference · Probabilistic Methods · Applications -> Network Analysis; Deep Learning
[ Paper]  [ Poster] 

Author Information

Victor Veitch (Columbia University)
Yixin Wang (Columbia University)
David Blei (Columbia University)

David Blei is a Professor of Statistics and Computer Science at Columbia University, and a member of the Columbia Data Science Institute. His research is in statistical machine learning, involving probabilistic topic models, Bayesian nonparametric methods, and approximate posterior inference algorithms for massive data. He works on a variety of applications, including text, images, music, social networks, user behavior, and scientific data. David has received several awards for his research, including a Sloan Fellowship (2010), Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award (2011), Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2011), Blavatnik Faculty Award (2013), and ACM-Infosys Foundation Award (2013). He is a fellow of the ACM.

More from the Same Authors